House Painting and other pregnancy no-no's

Well we needed to do it...the walls inside the house was this beige-pink color that was tolerable when we moved in about 18 months ago. Lately it has been making me seriously question buying a walking stick and covering my eyes (possibly with one of those really fancy-dancy eye pillows that smell of jasmine while simultaneously reducing swelling) for the duration of my existence in our house. Luckily Suz, who is starting to occasionally suffer from baby brain, came up with a better solution....why not paint the place?

Well that idea has been thought of (sometime around Thanksgiving time) and implemented, only two walls have been completed since operation paint the ugly walls was thought of. Oh but Suzi's brain didn't stop where mine did, she sent out the bat signal and we had a painting party! Our friends are better people then me, I'll tell you that much...thanks to Lisa, Becky, Lucas, Edith and James we knocked out our entire main floor in about 6 hours! I'd post pictures but I need better lighting, the flash on our point and shoot is terrible.

I know I know, but women with preggers are not supposed to paint...well the way we looked at it, our parents all painted the baby room at some point, most likely when they were pregnant and we turned out marginal, so we extrapolated that to painting the rest of the house, and then going out to get sushi...WOAH! WHAT?!?! SUZ HAD SUSHI???? Well Japanese people don't just up and change their diet, and frankly that country produces some amazingly smart kids...so yeah not sure how else to defend it.

Anywho, Suz is feeling a bit more baby movement, not like Mini Meli is doing triple sow cows or anything, maybe it is...but she feels 'flutters', not to be confused with gas, which I guess it sometimes is confused for, but trust us it's baby movement. OK on to week 18 pics:



Ok, last thing...this weeks topic of study for my EMT class is Airway anatomy, physiology and management...needless to say there are many pictures. Some very disturbing (ie - airway compromise due to soft tissue damage to the face and burning of the face/upper airway) and some that just made me laugh, such as this:


It might be hard to see, but the image is depicting a man in respiratory distress or failure. To me it came off more as an Asian man wondering what the hell happened to his arms and torso. Maybe not so funny to you all, but I laughed my butt off in the library this afternoon...

Long days...and nights

As it stands right now I am officially exhausted. It has been a rough couple weeks as of late with long days at work and long nights in class and lab and when I get home several hours of reading and studying. Suz might work late some nights and so we see each other for a few hours a night each weekday, but hey it's still better then when she had her travel gig and I only saw her a couple weekends a month.

My second test is later today and even though I've been studying hard (see above paragraph), I am feeling a little under prepared. This test should be fairly simple, covering what we do when we are called to an emergency, ie- scene size up, initial assessment, airway/breathing/circulation management, Rapid (or focused) Trauma (or Medical) assessment, baseline vital signs, patient history, detailed trauma (or medical) assessment, re-evaluate...all pulled out of my memory, maybe I will be ready for this test...either way I'll let you know the results.

You all might know I'm an engineer and if you know me well, I was never into the medical field, I couldn't even watch discovery health with out wanting to vomit, and now here I am studying this stuff. Well with my zero medical background and understanding am I constantly on line looking up information, medical jargon, etc. During one study session I wanted to better understand when it is that you treat on scene or treat en route, this is called 'Stay and Play VS Load and Go (and to added into the mix Load and Play then Go)'. Anyway it must have been around midnight on Sunday when I started my search and I ran across a medics blog site.
'Street Watch: Notes of a Paramedic'
I ran across a specific blog entry that has actually made me think about going the full Paramedic route rather then simply EMT-B and trying to get into a Fire Department, and of course there is always the option of being a FF/Medic...but I digress. Reading the following post sent a rush down my spine that has kept me going and focused all week on my upcoming test and end goals of finding a job that brings in more then a nice paycheck, I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

http://medicscribe.blogspot.com/2006/08/line.html

PS- we get to sign up for clinicals tonight, getting to put a little peddle to the metal in a couple weeks! I will update you all on how those go.

PPS-Suz and I are set for the next ultrasound, March 10th, 10am...Mini Meli will officially be male or female!

PPPS-I'm starting to think all this lack of sleep is a small intro to the amount of sleep I'll get as a father, probably not, I'll probably be getting a whole lot less.

The Week of the Belly - Week 17

Here they are. The belly popped out this week and I also felt the baby move a little bit!

Long over due....week 16!

Ok ok, we are terrible people...but we have had more craziness...the Xterra was in the shop for a week, we had Stewart in town over the weekend to go boarding (Suzi relaxed in the cabin) and this morning the Civic's battery was DEAD! Ugh...so the blog took some neglect here. But we are back hopefully going to try to get back on the weekly update schedule.

Suz is in her 'I'm feeling fat not pregnant' stage right now...but here we are at week 16 and she is on the low end of the weight gain schedule (only 5 lbs to date). Most likely due to her working out, pilates and soon to start up on the prenatal yoga...I think she works out more then me right now! A couple of shots of the pregnant one:


We are only 4 weeks away from finding out the sex of mini Meli, making it feel like time is flying and going sooooooooo s-l-o-w all at the same time.

In other baby news we have come to the conclusion of cloth diapering mini Meli. We have a friend that is doing it right now and she has been nothing short of an encyclopedia of information on the subject...Thanks Cheri! Knowing somebody that is going through cloth diapering (new age cloth diapering....ie - not 1980 cloth diapering) made the decision a little easier and after reading up about it I'm actually looking forward to it...well as much as you can look forward to cleaning up poopoo-kaka filled diapers...